UFV planning Indigenous Maps, Films, Rights and Land Claims program this summer

The University of the Fraser Valley will once again be offering a team-taught, four-week, intensive certificate program on Indigenous Maps, Films, Rights and Land Claims program in Chilliwack this summer.

This intensive four-week, three-course, 12-credit certificate offers students the opportunity to learn a range of conceptual and practical skills that are of direct relevance to the history, communication, implementation, and critique of rights, title, and land claims. It focuses on a range of representational practices, including, film, oral histories, documentaries, surveys and maps, and legal discourse analysis, and their importance to the Indigenous land and rights process generally, but with a focus on British Columbia in particular.

The in-class portion of this certificate will be offered for four weeks from June 17 through July 12 2012 on a ‘four-day-on, three-day-off’ schedule, with the remainder of the summer semester (through to the last two weeks of August) used by students for completion of assignments. In-class learning is supported by practicum work, visits to field sites, and guest lectures or visits by Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal experts working in the area of comprehensive land claims and treaty negotiations.

The team of instructors includes Hugh Brody, author, filmmaker and Tier I Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Studies at UFV; Dr. Ken Brealey of the UFV Geography department, who brings extensive experience in the research and mapping of oral and documentary history, and comprehensive and specific claims; Dr. David Schaepe, director and senior archaeologist at the Sto:lo Research and Resource Management Centre, who contributes extensive experience researching Sto:lo title, rights and heritage; and Naxaxalhts’i (Albert ‘Sonny’ McHalsie), cultural advisor/historian Sto:lo Research and Resource Management Centre, who holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Victoria and brings extensive experience in the negotiation of Sto:lo title and rights.

This certificate program is about the various ways by and through which Indigenous lands and resources were taken — and in this sense the telling of a story that more people still need to hear — but more importantly is about the various ways by and through which Indigenous peoples are getting them back — and in this sense a manifesto about truth, justice, and reconciliation, and how cultures relate to each other and the lands they now necessarily share in an increasingly interconnected, perhaps even increasingly ‘post-colonial’, world.